The following relates generally to wireless communication, and more specifically to efficient transition between a trusted wireless local area network (WLAN) and a wireless wide area network (WWAN).
Wireless communications systems are widely deployed to provide various types of communication content such as voice, video, packet data, messaging, broadcast, and so on. These systems may be capable of supporting communication with multiple users by sharing the available system resources (e.g., time, frequency, and power). Examples of such multiple-access systems include code division multiple access (CDMA) systems, time division multiple access (TDMA) systems, frequency division multiple access (FDMA) systems, and orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) systems. A wireless multiple-access communications system may include a number of base stations, each simultaneously supporting communication for multiple communication devices, which may each be referred to as a user equipment (UE). A wireless network may also include components of a WLAN, such as a Wi-Fi (i.e., IEEE 802.11) network, and may include access points (APs) that may communicate with at least one UE or station (STA).
In some cases, when a UE is located in the coverage area of both a WWAN and WLAN, certain packet data network (PDN) connections may be switched between these networks (i.e., an internet PDN or an internet protocol (IP) multimedia subsystem (IMS) PDN). For example, a UE may initially be associated with a WWAN and transition to a WLAN for communication and subsequently disconnect from the WWAN. However, in some cases a device connected to a trusted WLAN may continue to try to attach to the WWAN. The WWAN network may reject the attachment, which may trigger a timeout delay. If the UE leaves the coverage area of the WLAN, the UE may not be able to immediately reconnect to the WWAN, which may result in a disruption of delay in the communications of the user.